Ships
- USS Howorth (DD-592) Captain from 5 June 1945
William Lewis Thompson was a United States Navy officer from McKinney, Texas, apparently a graduate of the Naval Academy in the class of 1939, who took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer Howorth on 5 June 1945 as a lieutenant commander. The ship was at Mare Island, California, under repair for the kamikaze hit she had taken off Okinawa on 1 April. Under him she completed her repairs, sailed for Pearl Harbor and the western Pacific, and was on her way to Alaska when the war ended. The record of the man himself is brief.
The 1939 Lucky Bag gives his home as McKinney, Texas, and his nickname as "Wild Bill." The sources examined here do not give a birth date, name his parents, or say anything about his family.
The yearbook calls him "a son of Texas," and says "you can see it the minute you look at him." While "it would be unkind to say that his face resembles the flat expanse of the prairie, there is still a certain quality of the West about him." He had "good taste without fastidiousness; manliness without roughness, and that essence of the good fellow—simplicity." The best thing about "Bill" was "his sense of humor; it has twisted many an awkward situation into a funny one." The writers added that it "sticks out all over him, like the quills on a porcupine," although "his shafts are direct, they are always unbarbed," and that he had "inherent good manners and tact." "It is easy to get along with Bill's unselfish comradeship," they wrote. The activities line records plebe crew and battalion football, track, water polo, and stripes.
The Registers list a William Lewis Thompson as a midshipman in 1936, an ensign in 1940, in the lieutenant grades by 1942, and a lieutenant commander in 1944. That progression is what a member of the class of 1939 would show. The sources examined here do not name the ships he served in between 1939 and 1945.
The Howorth had been commissioned at Puget Sound on 3 April 1944 under Commander Edward Stitt Burns. She took part in the invasion of Iwo Jima and, on 1 April 1945, on her first day off Okinawa, was hit by a kamikaze which struck her superstructure, killing seven men and starting a fire that was quickly put out. She reached Mare Island on 2 May 1945 for repairs.
On 5 June 1945, according to NavSource's list of commanding officers, Lieutenant Commander William Lewis Thompson relieved Burns. His predecessor had commanded her through her first year of war, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa; Thompson came to her in the shipyard. The sources examined here do not say where he served immediately before, whether he joined her as a stranger or from her own wardroom, or what he found.
The repairs were done in early July. Photographs show the ship leaving Mare Island on 3 July 1945. She made a short shakedown cruise and sailed for Pearl Harbor on 15 July. On 15 August she was on her way to Adak, Alaska, when the news of the Japanese surrender reached her. She arrived at Yokohama on 17 September, escorted convoys home from Japan, made her final trip from there on 11 November, and reached San Francisco on 28 November 1945. She was decommissioned on 30 April 1946.
The sources examined here do not give the date on which Thompson left her. NavSource's list shows his tenure beginning on 5 June 1945 and carries no end date. No deck log, action report, letter or interview in his words was found.
Nothing about the rest of his life was found in the sources examined here: no later commands, retirement, marriage, children, death or burial.
He appears in the record in three places: a yearbook sketch of a good-natured Texan, a line in the Registers, and a line in the Howorth's list of captains. The ship was placed in reserve in 1946 and sunk as a torpedo target off San Clemente Island on 8 March 1962.